Just like human personal assistants, digital assistants or virtual assistants can perform requested tasks and provide requested advice, information, or services. An assistant's ability to fulfill a user's request is dependent on the assistant's correct comprehension of the request or instructions. Recent advances in natural language processing have enabled users to interact with digital assistants using natural language, in spoken or textual forms, rather than employing a conventional user interface (e.g., menus or programmed commands). Such digital assistants can interpret the user's input to infer the user's intent; translate the inferred intent into actionable tasks and parameters; execute operations or deploy services to perform the tasks; and produce output that is intelligible to the user. Ideally, the output produced by a digital assistant should fulfill the user's intent expressed during the natural language interaction between the user and the digital assistant.
The ability of a digital assistant system to produce satisfactory responses to user requests depends on the natural language processing, knowledge base, and artificial intelligence implemented by the system. At any time, a digital assistant may be limited by its particular implementation, however sophisticated that implementation may be, and fail to produce a satisfactory response to a user's request. A well-designed response procedure in such a situation can improve a user's experience in interacting with the system and prevent the user's loss of confidence in the system's service.